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Walking into the New Year
As I was preparing this post and then started to post, I put my title in first. I almost wrote: “Walking WITH PURPOSE into the New Year.” (Well, not all caps, but those were the words I chose to delete.) It’s not that “with purpose” is a bad idea. It’s a bad idea to walk into a new year stumbling…
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The dire warnings of Christian Celebrity
David French takes up the subject of celebrity pastors. It’s not just about the latest notable failing and “fashion pastors.” Or, “hot pastors.” It’s about guarding our hearts and staying humble before the Lord. Christian celebrities will continue to fall. But they don’t have to fall so often. They don’t have to inflict so much pain. Change will only come…
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The “hot” pastor
The “megachurch” culture keeps tripping over itself… and we keep ignoring it. Katelyn Beaty is bold enough to point out the latest issue: He also swam in waters that reward form over substance. Today’s sexualized, glossy version of the megachurch pastor is calculated to replace the stereotype of a frumpy pastor in pleated khakis and a combover. With skinny jeans,…
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New spiritual terrain in the time of coronavirus
“…most of us trying to bring change in a post-Christendom world are attempting to use lessons we learned in one situation that are keeping us from adapting to new spiritual terrain.” — Tod Bolsinger, Canoeing the Mountains
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Spiritually homeless … no more
A couple of podcasts this week have caught my attention. They expressed almost perfectly the internal struggle I’ve had for a number of years. While the views I heard would seem to say they are still “spiritually homeless”, I would say in my own life that is no longer true. Yet, I am thankful for these voices that speak out…
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All can be “well” and we can STILL be blind
One of the common mistakes we make in diagnosing current times is “how things are going.” If things are going reasonable “well” for us, we can’t see what might wrong beneath the surface, or care to explore that beneath the surface. In the U.S., we can say, “Hey, the economy is humming along (for us saying it, of course), so…
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The power of the Church
Maybe one day this will become a reality to us!
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The need for the Church
In my spiritual journey toward the Anglican Church, I have had for years a hunger for a better theology of the Church (ecclesiology). I tried to bring that emphasis into my ministry context as I was learning, but the overall structure I was in simply didn’t aid to that emphasis. I served in a denomination that was incredibly poor in…
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Spiritual formation in the public life
“Evangelicals have often been presented with a false choice about our role in public life. We either completely withdraw from trying to influence things, or we initiate ‘takeover’ programs. There is an alternative pattern, thought, one that I believe is mandated by Scripture: in the present time, where the fullness of Christ’s kingdom is not yet with us, we are…
Tag: Church Life
